Top military leaders in the Pentagon and in the field are growing increasingly frustrated by the tight constraints the White House has placed on the plans to fight ISIS and train a new Syrian rebel army.

As the American-led battle against ISIS stretches into its fourth month, the generals and Pentagon officials leading the air campaign and preparing to train Syrian rebels are working under strict White House orders to keep the war contained within policy limits. The National Security Council has given precise instructions on which rebels can be engaged, who can be trained, and what exactly those fighters will do when they return to Syria. Most of the rebels to be trained by the U.S. will never be sent to fight against ISIS.

Making matters worse, military officers and civilian Pentagon leaders tell The Daily Beast, is the ISIS war’s decision-making process, run by National Security Adviser Susan Rice. It’s been manic and obsessed with the tiniest of details. Officials talk of sudden and frequent meetings of the National Security Council and the so-called Principals Committee of top defense, intelligence, and foreign policy officials (an NSC and three PCs in one week this month); a barrage of questions from the NSC to the agencies that create mountains of paperwork for overworked staffers; and NSC insistence on deciding minor issues even at the operational level.

“We are getting a lot of micromanagement from the White House. Basic decisions that should take hours are taking days sometimes,” one senior defense official told The Daily Beast.

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
William Tecumseh Sherman

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
George S. Patton

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.Winston Churchill

If you like your army, you can keep your army. Period.
Barack H. Ohama

Turkey has agreed to allow the U.S.-led coalition to use its military bases for the fight against the Islamic State and to use Turkish territory as part of a training program for Syrian opposition fighters, Obama administration officials said Sunday.

“That’s a new commitment and one that we very much welcome,” Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Turkey denied Monday that it has reached any “new agreement” with the United States to allow the use of Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey for attacks on the Islamic State militant group, despite suggestions from the Obama administration that a deal had been reached.

A statement issued by the office of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said talks are continuing between Ankara and Washington over whether to permit U.S. forces to use Incirlik in the fight against the Islamic State, a radical al-Qaeda offshoot that has captured parts of Syria and Iraq. However, “there is no new agreement on the Incirlik issue,” the statement said.

You can understand why the regime would send out Susan Rice of a Sunday morning to spread a false narrative. It worked so well last time.

I was just culling the list of categories we link to our posts. Who cares about Mohamed Morsi anymore? Gone. Same with Barney Frank, even Ted Kennedy. But I stumbled a category we created called Amateur Hour. I debated keeping it, but we use it so rarely…I deleted it. I am so sad now.

The rest of the world must be looking at us and thinking this administrated is peopled by humiliated rejects from American Idol. Is the “She Bangs” guy free for Secretary of State?

Lesley Stahl: But when you have so many phone records being held, emails, heads of state’s phone conversations being listened in to, has it been worth our allies being upset? Has it been worth all the tech companies being upset? Has it been worth Americans feeling that their privacy has been invaded?

Susan Rice: Lesley, it’s been worth what we’ve done to protect the United States. And the fact that we have not had a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11 should not be diminished. But that does not mean that everything we’re doing as of the present ought to be done the same way in the future.

As NRO’s Jim Geraghty puts it: Ahem.

I would also note that any nation’s diplomatic property is sovereign to that nation. The terrorist lynching of Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty, and Chris Stevens IS a terrorist attack on our homeland.

President Obama on Monday took a sharp turn away from his “red line” threat to Syria on the eve of taking his case to the American people, saying in an interview with Fox News that he’s open to negotiations on an alternative plan that could avert a military strike…

“We will pursue this diplomatic track,” Obama told Fox News. “I fervently hope that this can be resolved in a non-military way.”…

“I welcome the possibility of the development,” he said. “We should explore and exhaust all avenues of diplomatic resolution to this.”

[White House counsel Kathryn] Ruemmler said that while an attack on Syria “may not fit under a traditionally recognized legal basis under international law,” the administration believed that given the novel factors and circumstances, such an action would nevertheless be “justified and legitimate under international law” and so not prohibited.

“If the regime immediately surrendered its stockpiles to international control, as was suggested by Secretary [John] Kerry and the Russians, that would be an important step,” [Hillary] Clinton said. “But this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction. Russia has to support the international community’s efforts sincerely, or be held to account.”

Oh crikey, back out.

Let’s see… we’ve heard from the current and former UN ambassadors and the current and former Secretaries of State. Oh yeah, what’s his name, the President of the United States. Is there anyone who doesn’t have an opinion?

No, we haven’t forgotten you, Senator Markey. “Present”, no matter how hard we may wish otherwise.

Let me be the first to thank the Russians for saving us from ourselves. Remember the good old days when it was the Americans who saved small countries from the Soviet Russian boot heel? Me neither, but I’ve read about it. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

The unofficial death toll in Syria passed 100,000 on Wednesday, and Bashar al-Assad’s forces built on recent military gains by retaking a strategic town along the Lebanese border. President Obama’s new national security adviser also disclosed how angry she is about it all, but that’s going to be cold comfort to the Syrian opposition.

Before starting her new job at the White House next week, Susan Rice bid farewell as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday by denouncing the failure “to act decisively” on Syria while thousands are killed and millions displaced. “Inaction on Syria is a moral and strategic disgrace that history will judge harshly,” she lectured Turtle Bay.

Mind you, Ms. Rice wasn’t talking about the failure of the world’s sole superpower to lead on Syria. She pinned the blame instead on the U.N. Security Council. Its inability to come together on Syria “is a stain on this body and something that I will forever regret, even though I don’t believe that outcome is a product of the action of the United States or its closest partners,” she said.

When asked by the press if the failure of efforts to end the war will prompt her to “do something to reverse this when you are at the NSC,” Ms. Rice shot back, “this [failure] is not part of my legacy or the U.S. legacy.” She went on to bemoan the three Russian and Chinese vetoes of “very mild resolutions” at the Security Council.

But what did she expect? That’s how “collective security” via the U.N. works. If someone in the Security Council objects, nothing happens. That’s why U.S. Presidents have built coalitions outside the U.N. when they want to act. But Moscow’s nyets were enough for the Obama Administration to do nothing for two years while Russia and Iran armed Assad.

We’ve presented enough evidence over the years that just about everything the UN does (or doesn’t do) is “a moral and strategic disgrace”. But I have little faith that history will judge it harshly. They say journalism is the first draft of history, and journalism has been thoroughly discredited. History, which is written by historians, after all—academics, overwhelmingly liberal, if not Marxist—will lie, obfuscate, and “contextualize” to protect Obama and blame Israel. If history is any guide…

With Susan Rice moving from the UN to the West Wing, the game of musical chairs needed another player, and it didn’t take long for Barack Obama to pick another insider to fill Rice’s seat. Longtime adviser Samantha Power will replace Rice, but unlike the first move today, Power will have to face a Senate confirmation hearing, and that may prove turbulent.

Really, why?

Power spent the first Obama term on his National Security Council, where she was a prime mover in the decision to intervene in Libya. Since the White House never bothered to seek Congressional approval for that war, this will give those still angry over the violation of the War Powers Act (and Constitution) an opportunity to settle some scores. Also, the actual outcome of that intervention — a failed state, the destruction of our Benghazi assets, and the invasion of Mali by suddenly-free radical Islamist terror networks — we can expect to get a lot of questions about the kind of advice Power actually gave the White House.

However, a bigger problem than that will be Israel. In 2002, Power told a Berkeley interviewer that she would advise a President to put together a “massive” Western military coalition to occupy Israel and the Palestinian territories in order to impose “a solution on unwilling parties.” On top of that, she told Harry Kreisler that this should be done even though it “might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import.” That would be the Jews in America, in case the subtlety didn’t come across.

I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Obama is pushing all his chips to the center of the table. In stonewalling Congress, keeping Eric Holder, throwing judge nominations against the wall, promoting the discredited Susan Rice—and now this—he’s going all in. What are you going to do about it, he dares us.

At least Hillary tried snowing us with Smart Power. As much of a train wreck as that was, it sure beats Sam Power.

Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially (sic) mean sacrificing—or investing, I think, more than sacrificing—billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.

“Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Friedman has called “Sharafat” [Sharon-Arafat]. I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention…. Any intervention is going to come under fierce criticism. But we have to think about lesser evils, especially when the human stakes are becoming ever more pronounced.”

Ick.

On the other hand, is not Hillary “a monster” as Power described? So she’s not all bad.

Incoming Secretary of State John Kerry says he was offered the job by President Obama a week before UN Ambassador Susan Rice withdrew her name from contention, an indication Rice was probably dumped from consideration and then permitted to make it seem like it was her choice to withdraw.

Obama offered Kerry the job as controversy raged over Rice’s false insistence that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was in response to an anti-Islamic film, even as evidence was available that it was a well-planned act of terrorism. Republicans were calling for her head even before Obama had offered her the job.

…

So why did Kerry reveal that he was tapped before Rice stood down, something so obviously injurious to Rice? I can only imagine that he was sick of being perceived as Obama’s second choice, the poor man’s Secretary of State.

I’ve always noticed that Kerry physically has the biggest head I’ve ever seen in my life. But it’s not very gracious to start his new job acting big-headed as well.

Newly-installed Secretary of State John Kerry will begin tweeting soon from the Department of State’s official Twitter account.

All tweets that come directly from Kerry will have his initials, “JK,” included at the end of the messages.

But in the world of social media, “JK” is widely understood to mean “just kidding.”

That’s all right. He’d prefer to add his middle initial anyway. JFK has a nice ring to it.

But how about our Secretary of State not tweeting? How about putting his mind to something longer than 140 characters, like, say, the cables from Benghazi begging for more protection (LOL!)? Or the agreements by the Palestinians to not incite hatred and calls for genocide (OMG!)? JK, JFK. U no best !

Remember the old cereal commercial where the two brothers don’t want to try a new cereal that’s “supposed to be good for you”? They get their little brother to try it and lo and behold he likes it. (Hey Mikey!)

“Secretary Clinton had originally been asked by networks to go on. She declined to do it.”
— Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, talking to NBC News.

…

It was Clinton herself that set in motion what would become the shambles of Rice’s once-inevitable march into the top cabinet slot for the second Obama term.

It was a round of Sunday show interviews in the wake of the Sept. 11 raid by Islamist militiamen in Libya that ultimately doomed Rice’s chance to have the top job. Rice, no doubt looking for the chance to burnish her profile on big issues, sallied forth the following Sunday to lay out the administration talking points that the deadly attack was a spontaneous result of riots over a YouTube video offensive to Muslims.

That wasn’t true, as some in the administration already knew. Not only was the attack not spontaneous, but there were no riots. It was a premeditated strike that resulted in a battle that raged off and on for many hours.

…

But whatever led Rice to say what she said, we know that Clinton herself wisely avoided the trap of talking about what she likely knew would end up being a serious foreign policy scandal. Madame Secretary opted to let the woman who was itching to replace her go ahead and take the limelight.

Clinton , who became the clear frontrunner for the 2016 presidential election the day after this year’s election, sidestepped what she knew, or had reason to know, would be a disaster.

Did she disagree with the White House communications strategy of emphasizing the spontaneity of the raid? Not likely since she would herself publicly emphasize the non-existent riots and the video in public remarks.

More likely she knew that she would have difficulty answering the other questions. Her agency had denied requests for additional security despite prior attacks and warnings from the doomed ambassador. She herself likely knew what the president knew, and when he knew it, about the raid and why Obama chose not to send reinforcements to the consulate.

Rice’s rueful explanation about Clinton sidestepping the Sunday shows makes it clear she knows who lured the bears into camp. Rice, a stalwart retainer of the House of Obama, knows that Clinton, the matriarch of the rival Democratic clan, let the ambitious ambassador take the fall. Not only did it shield Clinton but it also helped set up the nomination of her former colleague and ally, Sen. John Kerry.

Having survived the first several rounds of the Benghazi debacle, Clinton faces her final and greatest test: testimony before fuming House Republicans.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sustained a concussion after becoming dehydrated and fainting, a State Department official said.

Clinton had been suffering from a stomach virus at the time, according to a statement on Saturday from Philippe Reines, deputy assistant secretary of state.

She is being monitored by doctors and is recovering at home. She was never hospitalized, Reines said.

“At their recommendation, she will continue to work from home next week, staying in regular contact with Department and other officials. She is looking forward to being back in the office soon,” Reines said.

Secretary Clinton had been scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill Thursday about the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, in September that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.

Jodi Seth, spokeswoman for Sen. John Kerry, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, said in a statement that Clinton would not testify before that committee Thursday.

“Secretary Clinton’s team contacted Senator Kerry this morning to inform them of the Secretary’s concussion. Senator Kerry was relieved to hear that the Secretary is on the mend, but he insisted that given her condition, she could not and should not appear on Thursday as previously planned, and that the nation’s best interests are served by the report and hearings proceeding as scheduled with senior officials appearing in her place,” Seth said.

The Bloodthirstan Foreign Office wishes the Secretary a speedy recovery from her unpleasant and untimely malady. A stomach virus, a fainting spell, and a concussion—of all the bad luck! And how gallant of Senator Kerry to be so understanding! We trust she’ll feel better by 2016.

Cui bono: Latin for “who benefits” or “the fix is in”. Susan Rice never saw it coming, did she?

As someone observed, the only person to pay for the travesty in Benghazi is the one who had nothing to do with it. Susan Rice is out for Secretary of State.

Beep! Beep! Beep! That’s the sound of the Mayflower moving truck backing up to John Kerry’s Louisburg Square mansion.

NBC News is reporting that Susan Rice is no longer interested in the position of secretary of state and the president has accepted her decision.

This means that Massachusetts senator John Kerry is the most likely next top diplomat of the United States. Yes, folks, he’s back!

While the confirmation hearings for Rice would have made good entertainment, they would have been far too contentious. Charges of racism and sexism would have been thick in the air. Kerry will sail through (get it?).

And his performance in this role of a lifetime will be epic. We’ll be talking Oscars, Tonys, Emmys, and Cy Young Awards.

The problem is that Kerry has gotten most of the biggest foreign-policy calls of the past two decades wrong.

He voted against the authorization of force for the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

He opposed President Bush’s 2007 surge in Iraq, calling it “a tragic mistake.” The surge, he elaborated, “won’t end the violence; it won’t provide security; . . . it won’t turn back the clock and avoid the civil war that is already underway; it won’t deter terrorists, who have a completely different agenda; it won’t rein in the militias.” In September 2007, Kerry voted in favor of a resolution introduced by Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) to withdraw all U.S. troops within 90 days.

Where Kerry isn’t wrong, he is living up to his flip-flopper label: He voted for the Iraq War and then later insisted he voted only to threaten the use of force, not to actually authorize the use of force. He initially supported and then opposed a funding bill for the Iraq War in late 2003, which prompted the confusing defense, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”

He has called Israel’s security fence “a barrier to peace” and “a legitimate act of self-defense.”

In 2004, one of the biggest applause lines in Kerry’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Boston was, “We shouldn’t be opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America.” By February of this year, Kerry was denouncing his own applause line: “Cutting foreign aid has always been a guaranteed applause line on the political stump . . . efforts in Congress to cut billions from the president’s proposed budget for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are short-sighted.”

In May 2011, shortly after the U.S. Navy SEALs successfully raided Osama bin Laden’s compound, Kerry was quick to emphasize that U.S. military efforts in that part of the world were far from over: “With the death of Bin Laden, some people will ask why we don’t pack up and leave Afghanistan. We can’t do that. . . . Our military is making significant inroads clearing the south of insurgents. But we expect a significant Taliban counterattack this spring to regain some of these areas. We also know insurgents are spreading into other areas of Afghanistan as we drive them from their bases in the south.” But one month later, Kerry was saying the cost of the war was “unsustainable” and urging President Obama to speed up troop withdrawals.

…

But it is Kerry’s dedicated cultivation of Bashar Assad — one of his primary foreign-policy focuses since his 2004 presidential bid — that most clearly illustrates his naïveté.

On March 15, 2011, the first sparks of a national uprising against Assad’s regime ignited; within days there were large-scale protests in several cities, and police responded with live ammunition in some cases. About 70 Syrian civilians were killed in the initial weeks.

This won’t come as a surprise to most of you, since he’s more of a national figure than a local one, but Kerry is going to be comedy gold. Gold. I’ve been reserving most of my popcorn for the coming domestic disasters, Aggie, but I need something different for the foreign eff-ups. I’m thinking scotch. Single malt, 15 yo at least. Nothing makes mayhem go down smooth like a well-aged Islay.

I guess this is what they mean when they say they’ve got Israel’s back:

At the 2012 Saban Forum on Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the lack of Israeli understanding for the Palestinians in negotiations: “I’m not making excuses for the missed opportunities of the Israelis, or the lack of generosity, the lack of empathy that I think goes hand-in-hand with the suspicion. So, yes, there is more that the Israelis need to do to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of an oppressed people in their minds.” She also insisted that Israel must continue to negotiate with the Palestinians in order “to occupy the moral high ground.” Who knew Israel didn’t already have that when dealing with terrorist organizations?

How many lies are there in those few words? What “missed opportunities”? “Lack of generosity”, “lack of empathy”? Is she deranged? What kind of “oppressed people” fire off rockets and mortars indiscriminately at a civilian population—from amidst a civilian population? If Israel were any higher on the “moral high ground”, they would need oxygen.

Of all the despicable and hateful things the Obama regime has ever said and done, this ranks up high. (Though I laughed out loud at the use of the word “occupy” when applied to moral high ground! As if Israel is a usurper there, too.)

[W]hen a genocide began in Rwanda the following April, the [Clinton] administration went to great lengths to avoid any involvement—beginning with the refusal to use the word “genocide” at all. Giving voice to that sentiment was none other than Ms. Rice:

“At an interagency teleconference in late April [1994],” writes Samantha Power in her book “A Problem From Hell,” Ms. Rice “stunned a few officials present when she asked, ‘If we use the word “genocide” and are seen as doing nothing, what will the effect be on the November [congressional] election?’ Lieutenant Colonel [Tony] Marley remembers the incredulity of his colleagues at the State Department. ‘We could believe that people would wonder that,’ he says, ‘but not that they would actually voice it.'”

…

In May 1998, Ms. Rice had an opportunity to prove her diplomatic mettle when she was sent to mediate a peace plan between warring Ethiopia and Eritrea.

“What is publicly known,” notes Mr. Rosenblum, “is that Rice announced the terms of a plan agreed to by Ethiopia, suggesting that Eritrea would have to accept it, before Isaias had given his approval. He responded angrily, rejecting the plan and heaping abuse on Rice. Soon afterward, Ethiopia bombed the capital of Eritrea, and Eritrea dropped cluster bombs on Ethiopia. . . .

“Susan Rice was summoned back to Washington in early June after the negotiations collapsed. Insiders agree that the secretary of state [Madeleine Albright] was furious. According to one, Rice was essentially ‘put on probation,’ kept in Washington where the secretary could keep an eye on her. ‘Susan had misread the situation completely,’ according to one State Department insider who observed the conflict with Albright. ‘She came in like a scoutmaster, lecturing them on how to behave and having a public tantrum when they didn’t act the way she wanted.”

An estimated 100,000 people would perish in the war that Ms. Rice so ineptly failed to end.

…

Then there is the Congo. Human-rights groups have long accused the Clinton administration of acquiescing in the efforts by Rwanda and Uganda to topple the Congolese government of Laurent Kabila in 1998, which by some estimates wound up taking more than five million lives. In congressional testimony, Ms. Rice angrily denied any U.S. role in condoning or supporting the intervention.

But Ms. Rice may not have been completely forthcoming. “Museveni and Kagame agree that the basic problem in the Great Lakes is the danger of a resurgence of genocide and they know how to deal with that,” Ms. Rice is said to have remarked confidentially after a visit to the region, according to reporter Howard French of the New York Times. “The only thing we [the United States] have to do is look the other way.”

Which is what the U.S. did.

…

For now, let’s give Prof. Rosenblum the last word on the person who might yet be the next secretary of state:

“Rice proved herself brilliant, over time, in working the machinery of government. But along the way she burned bridges liberally, alienating and often antagonizing many potential allies. . . . Susan Rice seems not to have convinced colleagues that her real interest was Africa, or even foreign policy.”

Don’t be in such a hurry to go, Hillary! Maybe Israel could climb maybe just a little higher on that moral high ground, display a little more empathy. Maybe allow tons of goods to pass through their crossings (oops, they already do), or allow sick Arab children to be treated in Israeli hospitals (damn, they do that too). Okay, how about 2,999 new houses, instead of 3,000?

The president has said that Ms. Rice should not be criticized because she “had nothing to do with Benghazi” and so couldn’t have known better when she gave her false account. According to Mr. Obama (and to her), she simply repeated talking points provided by an amorphous and anonymous “intelligence community.”

But Ms. Rice did know at least a couple of things. She knew that she had nothing to do with Benghazi. She knew that after the attack the president insisted that U.S. leaders not “shoot first and aim later” but rather “make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts.” She knew that the video story line was questionable, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) and administration officials had already suggested publicly that the attack was al Qaeda-related. And she knew that the president had a political interest in asserting that al Qaeda wasn’t successfully attacking senior American officials but was instead “on the run,” as he maintained on the campaign trail.

Senators might therefore ask Ms. Rice why she was put forward to speak about Benghazi, and what part her personal ambition might have played in her willingness to assume the role known during the Cold War as “useful idiot.”

Ms. Rice might also be asked what she knew about al Qaeda’s operations in Libya. As a member of the U.N. Security Council and its “Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee,” she is privy, for example, to information about the al Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which is under sanctions and, according to the council, “maintain[s] a presence in eastern Libya.”

She might have known this and she should have known that, but what is known above all is that she did her president’s bidding. Where was Hillary on that infamous Sunday morning when Ms. Rice spun the same false story on five (count ‘em!) talk shows? Was that goodwill trip to Vanuatu (or wherever) so vital that the explanation of the deaths of four Americans (and the post-mortem defilement of at least one of them) at the hands of Al Qaeda’s forces could be fobbed off to a mere UN Ambassador?

We know where Obama was the day after their deaths, the grisly nature of which he was completely apprised at the time: Las Vegas.

President Obama tells us our quarrel is with him, not Susan Rice, and he’s absolutely right. We had our chance to reprimand him for his reckless and disgraceful behavior, yet 50.8% of us (them) chose to return him to office for another four years. As Egyptians got the Muslim Brotherhood they chose (and they got it good and hard), we get the non-Muslim (he’s not!) brother we chose. How could we in good conscience we deny him his choice for Secretary of State?

The authors of this piece further demonstrate Ms. Rice’s perfidy at the United Nations—toward Israel and in cahoots with the loathsome Human Rights Council—but the point still stands: she serves at the pleasure of the President. Who are we to cavil at her exemplary performance in that role?

Trust me, nothing would make me happier than John Kerry as Secretary of State. It would be pure blogging comedy gold, and his Senate vacancy might offer Scott Brown an opportunity to resume his role as junior senator from the Commonwealth.

But we have a tradition of attractive black female Secretaries of State (thanks to President Bush), so I will set aside my personal feelings and endorse her candidacy. If nothing else, she will put an attractive face on a hideously ugly American foreign policy.

(Not that her pleasing visage did anything to clean up that stable of old goats, pigs, and mindless sheep at the United Nations.)

I don’t think the Republican party is racist now (and, historically, the GOP has a lot less to answer for than the Democratic party does). But that hasn’t stopped a lot of people from slandering Republicans as racist for one reason or another. Right now, many in Washington — particularly the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus — insist that Republican attacks on U.N. ambassador Susan Rice are racist and, yawn, sexist. The basis for this claim is that some Republicans are calling Rice unfit for the soon-to-be-vacated job of secretary of state. More specifically, they’re cross with Rice for what they contend to be her dishonest and incompetent handling of the Benghazi scandal.

As more women and minorities receive keys to the executive washroom, they must learn that sometimes one’s hands get dirty. Ambassador Chris Stevens served at the pleasure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was murdered (and defiled) for his efforts. He was a sitting duck, a lamb for slaughter. At some level, that’s on her. Neither Condoleezza Rice nor Colin Powell lost any diplomats on their watch—nor did any Secretary of State stretching back to the Carter Administration.

And Susan Rice was paraded before the media to spin a tale that was known to be false from the moment Stevens et al came under fire. It was an invention. Whether she knew it or not merely dictates whether she was a willing co-conspirator or an unwitting dupe. I don’t know whether the latter disqualifies her to be Secretary of State (else why would John Kerry be considered), but the former certainly does.